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He went on to elaborate that Facebook does have access to audio when people record videos on their devices for Facebook, but otherwise it doesn’t access your microphone.

However, the rumour isn't going away, with more and more people claiming it's happening to them.

And I experienced it myself recently - twice. I talked about something with somebody and later got adverts for those two things.

At first, I thought I was just being paranoid. But the products are so utterly obscure that I'm struggling to explain how I could possibly have got those ads other than through the method Facebook categorically denies using.

How it all started

It all started when I needed to pee.

Here's a bit of context. My partner and I, having recently bought a campervan, were talking about female urination devices and how useful they would be for the van.

You know those portable funnel-looking things that women can use to pee on the move? It was completely random and, to be honest, we had a right old giggle about the whole idea.

And that was it. Nothing but a fleeting conversation and soon after I forgot all about it.

That is, until the next day, when I was scrolling through Facebook and noticed an ad from the e-commerce company Wish pop up on my timeline.

It was advertising female urinating devices for £1.

I was targeted with this ad

Tyler spoke about the 'Shewee' - then it came up on her Facebook

Then things got weirder.

Over the weekend, one of the colleagues I had told about this had jokingly recounted my experience to one of the other mothers at her son's rugby game.

Like me, they both thought nothing more of it. Until the mother was also targeted with the same ad for female urination devices the following day.

Again, she claims that she hadn't researched the product in any way, apart from talking to my colleague about it at the game.

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Apart from talking about it, I had not researched this product at all. So I hadn't Googled it, or typed it into Facebook.

Surely, this was such a random item that this ad couldn't be just a pure coincidence?

I decided to tell my work colleagues about it. And, naturally, most of them laughed and shrugged it off. I was suddenly becoming the crazy, conspiracy theorist Zuckerberg joked about.

Then it happened again.

A few days later and things really started to freak me out.

In work, I had been sent a police video of a man attempting to stab an officer during an arrest. It was a really shocking video. It was sent via email from a Welsh police force and linked to the video on their YouTube channel.

Later that day, while at home, I showed a copy of the YouTube video to my partner.

We talked about how lucky the officer was that he was wearing a stab-proof vest, or he might have been seriously injured.

Like before, I thought nothing more of it and the night carried on as normal.

And then I was targeted with this ad

How did it know she had been discussing bullet proof vests?

At around midnight, I checked Facebook only to see another ad from Wish. This time, advertising a stab proof vest!

Now, I was officially freaked out. I hadn't researched stab-proof vests in any way.

The only link I had to them was the YouTube video showing the incident, which had no mention of stab-proof vests in the caption.

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So, I asked Facebook.

I explained how I thought Facebook had been targeting ads by accessing my phone’s microphone and told them about the specific instances over the past week.

I sent them screen shots of the ads.

Facebook responded with a link to a comment on their newsroom website.

The comment said: "Facebook does not use your phone’s microphone to inform ads or to change what you see in News Feed.

"Some recent articles have suggested that we must be listening to people’s conversations in order to show them relevant ads.

"This is not true.

"We show ads based on people’s interests and other profile information – not what you’re talking out loud about.

"We only access your microphone if you have given our app permission and if you are actively using a specific feature that requires audio.

"This might include recording a video or using an optional feature we introduced two years ago to include music or other audio in your status updates."

This optional feature they referred to in their response was released in 2014 and allowed users - who choose to turn the feature on – to use their phone’s microphone to identify what song is playing or what show or movie is on TV when writing a status update.

But I had never used this feature.

I have, however, used the Facebook Live feature a few times, which means at some point I must have allowed Facebook to access my microphone.

There didn't seem to be any clear explanation, so I decided to explore Facebook's ad preferences in a bit more detail, to try and find out a bit more about how they were using my personal information.

Exploring your Facebook ad preferences

On the Facebook app, it's possible to see your Facebook ad preferences - that is the information shared with advertisers - under the 'Ads' subsection.

It allows you to see advertisers you've interacted with, your information, ad settings and to hide ad topics.

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Kent families

It included companies I often use and interact with - like ASOS, Airbnb, Amazon, Domino's, Groupon, MAC Cosmetics, Netflix and Wowcher.

But it also included loads of pages I had never even heard of - Chobani (a food & drinks company in London); PediaSureUS (a nutritional drinks company for kids)

It also included a lot of public figures I had never heard of - Ali Shaheed Muhammad (a musician from Brooklyn); Ansel Elgort (an American actor); Charlotte Lawrence (a musician from LA); Eden (a singer from Dublin) and even Sadiq Khan (the mayor of London).

But, again, nothing at all about female urination devices or stab-proof vests.

I guess I'll never find out exactly why these ads popped up on my timeline when they did.

Facebook are unambiguous when they say they do not use the microphone to capture audio to target ads.

But maybe next time I'll talk about something a bit more worthwhile - like the winning lottery numbers.